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The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of managerial stock ownership on the relationship between material internal control weaknesses (ICW) and audit fees.

The paper uses multivariate regression analyses on a sample of 1,578 ICW and 1,578 pair-matched (based on both propensity score and managerial stock ownership) non-ICW firm observations for a period from 2004 to 2010 to investigate how managerial incentive at various stock ownership levels impacts the relationship between material ICW and audit fees.

For the firms with low managerial stock ownership (up to 5 per cent stockholdings), the authors find no significant effect of managerial ownership on the positive relationship between audit fees and ICW. However, the impact of managerial stock ownership on the relationship between ICW and audit fees is significantly positive when managerial ownership is medium, i.e. more than 5 per cent and less than or equal to 25 per cent stockholdings, and the managerial ownership effect is even higher when managerial stock ownership is high, i.e. more than 25 per cent stockholdings. The result is especially robust for the ICW firms with high managerial stock ownership (i.e. where managers hold more than 25 per cent equity stake in the firms). The additional analyses further show that this managerial ownership effect is more pronounced when the firms suffer from company-level material control weaknesses that have pervasive negative effect on financial reporting quality.

The results imply that in a low managerial ownership firms with substantial misalignment between manager and shareholder incentives, managerial stock ownership has little effect on the ICW and audit fee relationship. But when managers’ ownership interest is at a high level, they are more prone to purchase higher-quality audit service to reduce the risk of financial misstatements due to material ICW, which results in higher audit fees. The results add to the audit fee literature by suggesting that managerial incentive at various ownership levels is a critical governance factor that impacts auditor’s fee structure especially when higher reporting risk exists due to material ICW.

Prior literature documents that there is some relationship between managerial attributes and earnings quality; however, there is no substantive empirical evidence on the effect of managerial stock ownership on audit pricing when client companies face higher risk of financial misreporting as a result of material ICW. In this study, the authors seek answers to these empirical questions and fill the gap in the literature.

The objective of this study is to investigate the current status quo of online reporting in 2010. Further, this study seeks to explain corporate online reporting in Jordan by using companies' characteristics as explanatory factors for any variations in disclosure. Finally, the current findings are set in the context of prior studies in order to determine the existence of disclosure transformation.

Listed Jordanian companies were investigated to explore the current status of corporate online reporting. An un‐weighted index comprising 70 un‐weighted financial and non‐financial items was employed.

A total of 175 of 272 companies were found with accessible and active websites. The overall average level of corporate online reporting was 70 percent, as measured by the mean of the overall items of the current index. Variations in corporate online reporting were associated with size, performance, foreign ownership and online company familiarity.

This study provides a comprehensive online disclosure index that can be used to inform Jordanian companies about the format and the content of corporate online reporting. It also offers a solid ground for future research on corporate online reporting. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that corporate online reporting had been moved forward but there is plenty of room to further explore the field.

This paper provides evidence on the current status quo of online reporting in Jordan as one of the emerging economies in 2010 as a year with great expectations and predictions. This paper is the first to examine several companies' characteristics by using multivariate analyses. This paper also examines the online companies' familiarity for the first time as a potential factor affecting corporate online reporting in the literature. Moreover, the trend analysis shows corporate online reporting has steadily risen over the past few years, which is evidence of disclosure transformation theory in Jordan as it is in other emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance effectiveness and information transparency. Hence, this paper seeks to extend prior information transparency research.

This study uses a sample of 28 non-financial listed Tunisian companies and covers an eight-year period from 2006 to 2013. To test the hypotheses of this research, a simultaneous equation system model was applied.

The results obtained show that, for the Tunisians companies, corporate governance practices have a significant positive effect on information transparency. The current study also provides evidence that pertinent information can improve corporate governance index.

The findings may be of interest to the academic researchers, practitioners and regulators who are interested in discovering the quality of corporate governance practices in Tunisian context.

The findings of this study can help Tunisian regulators in creating corporate governance disclosure requirements. The findings also provide the African business community insights concerning the quality of corporate governance and of corporate reporting.

This research helps also to inform regulators about the benefits of disclosure more information to investors and to the firm. For instance, how the information can be a source of transparency and stability in the firms what and favors the social environment of the firms.

This paper extends the existing literature by examining the causal relationship between corporate governance and information transparency.